Step Fourteen, Take It Easy
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day eight hundred and seventy-six: top 16, number 6: When Brittany comes looking for Kurt, Burt ends up spending time with her. - Paper Heart series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 41st cycle. Now cycle 42!_

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><p><em><strong>INTRODUCING "CHEAT SHEET" - <strong>If you want to know ahead of time when a certain series will be updated next, just reassemble the link below and check out the list, save it, print it, bookmark it, whatever you need!  
>Go to: <span>gleekathon [dot] tumblr [dot] com [slash] cheatsheet<span>_

_** UPDATED WITH CYCLE 42 CHEAT SHEET **_

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><p><strong>Countdown cycle #4 - <strong>Yes, it's that time again, where I select 16 favorite things (characters, ships, friendships...) from Glee and give them each a ficlet, and a chapter fic for #1. The previous countdown cycles, if you want to check them out, were c10 [days 190-210], c25 [days 505-525], and c29 [days 589-609]. Like the last countdowns, the #1 story is split in 3 blocks, the chapters posted on Tuesdays and Wednesdays over these three weeks, with #16 to #2 from Thursdays to Mondays.  
><strong>Coming in at #6...<strong>

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><p><strong>"Step Fourteen, Take It Easy"<br>Brittany & Burt  
>Paper Heart series #15 (following 'Step Thirteen...') <strong>

He'd grown tired of waiting for the plumber, so he'd decided to grab his tools and look under the hood to another kind of engine. He'd worked, and he'd found the problem, fixed it the way he saw it needed to be fixed, and when he'd stood back and tested the faucet. "Thank you very much," he nodded to himself, holding his arms out. He was picking up his tools, waiting for the plumber to arrive so he could rub this in his face, when the doorbell rang. "Come to take a look at my handiwork?" he smirked, walking to the door. When he pulled it open though, it wasn't the short guy with the Bon Jovi t-shirt who usually came. Instead it was a sixteen-year-old blonde in a loosely-fitted purple shirt which traced her pregnant belly.

"Mr. Hummel…" she was surprised.

"Brittany… I wasn't expecting you, are you looking for Kurt?" he asked, and she nodded. "He's not here right now, I think he's at the library."

"Oh, alright," she started to turn to leave.

"No, wait, hang on," he reached out and she turned back to him. "You, uh, you want to come in and wait? It'll give you and I a chance to… to get to know each other a little better, you know?"

"Okay," she smiled hesitantly, then followed him in as he stepped back.

"Well…" he looked uncertain as well. "Are you hungry?" he suddenly thought of. "You must be, I mean…" he indicated her belly, and there was a flicker in her eye that made him worry she thought he meant she was fat or something, which made him feel the need to explain further. "Because of the baby and all," he nodded.

"Right," she replied, easing back down. "Okay," she consented once again.

"Here, sit," he indicated the kitchen table and he went to look; he wasn't sure what they had, and honestly he wasn't exactly the cooking expert of the household. He started talking at that point, hoping to mask some of this. "Have you been some of those cravings, with food and all that? When my wife was pregnant with Kurt, I must have run out to buy her chocolate chip ice cream," he smiled at the memory. "She'd just come walking in and she'd give me that look like 'just get in your car and go or I'm going to keep standing here looking at you until you do,' but, you know, in a good way," he nodded.

"Pineapple," her voice drew him back to attention and he looked to her. "Used to hate it, and then last month my dad brought some home, the fresh kind… I smelled it and just…" she took a deep breath.

"So you liked it?" he smiled.

"I ate the whole thing," she admitted, then, "Then I found out it wasn't such a good idea."

"Did you get sick?" he asked, nodding.

"No, it was really sour, and it hurt inside my mouth," she pointed. "Bled a little, but it got better. After that, I had to pace myself," she went on.

"Yeah, good thinking," he paused. "I don't have any pineapple."

"That's okay," she shrugged. "Your story about ice cream kind of made me want some," she smiled, and he smiled back.

"Now that we do have," he promised, moving to get the tub from the freezer to make her a bowl. He put it in front of her, then after a moment took a seat at the table with her. They were quiet for some time, while she ate. They'd look to one another once in a while, smile… They had never really spent much time alone before. They'd had one very small conversation a while back, when she'd called for Kurt and Burt had been the one to answer, but other than that…

He looked at the girl, and he still remembered the night he'd met her, of all nights, the night when the child growing inside her had been conceived, even if he didn't know this at the time. Later he'd be reminded of her presence in his basement months before, when he'd found out about Kurt being on the football team, but that night was the one he associated with meeting her. So much had been going on with Kurt, with this sudden change in style, he hadn't given her much thought except for his advice for protection… whatever that got them. Since the day he'd found out about this baby though, she'd gone from being the first and only girl he'd known his son to date, to being the mother of his future grandchild. It wasn't as though he had wanted for this to come along in his son's life now, but there they were, and they had to adapt. It had been one thing to see how Kurt had been growing with the months that passed, as he neared fatherhood, but it was something else to see this girl grow as well, not just physically.

"Mr. Hummel?" she spoke up, halfway through her bowl.

"You know you can call me Burt," he reminded her with a smile. She smirked. "What?" he asked.

"Burt and Kurt," she laughed.

"I know," he smiled. "It wasn't intentional, it was Liz's father's name, she'd always said she'd name her son after him if she had one…"

"So I don't have to find a name that rhymes for him then?" she pointed to her belly.

"Oh, no, please," he shook his head. "I don't think there'd be one," he considered after a moment, and the next minute was silenced by their running through the alphabet, and then by the realization they had indeed come up empty. "Please don't name my grandson… Gurt…" he joked, and she laughed.

"I promise," she nodded.

"Have you thought of any names yet?" he had to ask.

"Not really. I think Kurt thinks we should wait until we know for sure that it's a boy, even if I've told him I know that's what he is," she shrugged.

"Well I'm with you on that," he declared and she beamed, getting back to her ice cream. "I bet you're looking forward to the end of the school year, right?"

"Yeah, sort of," she admitted. "But I look forward to that every year." She hesitated, looking in her bowl.

"Everything alright?" he asked her, sensing some things were being left unspoken. She was pressing her lips together like she was trying to keep herself quiet. "It can stay between us." She looked back to him.

"It's not a big deal, I mean… it's kind of stopped now, for me, but I don't know if it has for him and he won't say…" He shook his head, lost.

"Okay, start over, and feel free to add details… at all," he told her.

"Sorry," she blinked, sitting back up. "Kids at school, they were saying things… about me, after they found out about the baby. But then Kurt, he…" she gave a small smile. "He stood up for me, told them to be nicer, but when he did that he also told them that he was the father… They left me alone, like he said, but then instead…"

"They started in on him?" he asked, suddenly looking three feet taller. She gave a small nod, and he let out a breath.

"Please don't tell him I told you?" she begged. He frowned, working himself back down little by little.

"Alright, I won't. But if things get out of hand, you guys need to tell me, deal?"

"Deal," she nodded. He breathed in, then nodded, getting up.

"More ice cream?" he asked, and she held out her bowl with a smile.

THE END

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><p><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>******always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!******


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